NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY
Mario Lanza (1921-1959) barely had time to consider a career as an operatic tenor: following being spotted by conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1942 and singing Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, by Giacomo Puccini, in New Orleans, he made a sensational debut at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where producer Louis B. Mayer noticed him.
Of Italian origin, the American tenor became a star of the MGM studios, where Louis B. Mayer hired him. During the ten years of his short career, he would shoot musical films there, including the biopic The Great Caruso (1951), by Richard Thorpe, which was a huge box office success.
According to the cases and the repertoires, Mario Lanza sang with a rich and full voice of classical tenor or with the lightened timbre of a crooner, à la Frank Sinatra. These feature films would make him the “first media tenor”as said Luciano Pavarotti (who had sung as a child alongside his idol, also well known in Italy).
“Blessed Voice of the Gods”
Mario Lanza’s taste for food – at Christmas, he had two trees erected, one of which was garnished with sausages… – and alcohol sometimes caused him to gain up to 35 kg, which the “dieticians” of the era make him lose at high speed, with appetite suppressants and infusions… Before the tenor takes them back with a vengeance. So we see it sometimes – like Judy Garland in The Pretty Farmer (1950), by Charles Walters – at different weights during the scenes of the same film. Mario Lanza will die of his excesses at the age of 38, in 1959, in Rome.
Music critics often discounted his interest in Lanza, while many lyrical artists adored him. The tenor Joseph Callejawho appears in the documentary Mario Lanza. The Best of Everything, even goes so far as to say that Lanza sang better than the illustrious Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). Difficult to prove since “the Maltese nightingale” heard neither the first nor the second on stage.
But the burning question arises: why didn’t Mario Lanza sing more on stage (his MGM contract gave him six months a year to do so)? Would he have been comparable to the great tenors in practice in his time, Franco Corelli, Mario Del Monaco or Carlo Bergonzi ?
This 2017 film provides a documented look back at the career of the “blessed voice of the gods” with excerpts from his filmography, period news and miscellaneous testimonials. Including those of his daughter, his biographer and a few classically trained singers with a background in popular music. But we are embarrassed by the feeling that the documentary is too long, or, more precisely, that it never treats the subject other than by scattered and redundant sequences on the part of the speakers.
Mario Lanza, the Best of Everythingdocumentary by Alan Byron (RU, 2017, 82 min).
